CHRONICLE …………. 8-29-06

HELP LINE

Beware the perils of sticky old data

Q: Can you recommend a program to completely erase a hard drive on an old computer that I want to give away?

I don't want to have to worry about someone retrieving my old data.

A: This question brings up an issue of which all computer owners should be aware: Even if you delete all of your files or format your hard drive, a truly industrious person could scavenge for files using some rudimentary tools.

This is something you should consider when it's time to donate or sell your old

PC.

In most cases, if you were to format your hard drive and reinstall the operating system software or use the recovery disks that come with most PCs, you would be fairly well protected against someone retrieving deleted files.

If you are really concerned and you want to be doubly sure your personal files cannot be retrieved, there are many free disk-wiping utilities that will make it next to impossible to get any data at all from your old hard drive.

Check out SDelete from Sysinternals at www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/SDelete.html or DBAN Boot and Nuke which can be downloaded from www.dban.sourceforge.net.

Q: It seems that now, whenever I hit Ctrl-AltDelete to open my Task Manager, I don't get all of the same options or tabs I used to get.

All I see is "Task" and "Status." I see no menu options or right-click options to restore the menus. Can I get it to go back to the way it was?

A: t appears that you have managed to activate the obscure and dubious Tiny Footprint mode of the Task Manager.

To restore the Task Manager to normal mode, just doubleclick anywhere along the top border of the window.

If you would like to put it back into Tiny Footprint mode, you can double-click a blank spot to the right of the row of tabs that say Applications, Processes, etc.

The only benefit for the Tiny Footprint mode I can find is that it lets you minimize the Task Manager much more than the normal mode.

Q: I have many, many files in the My Documents folder I would like to delete. Is there a way to remove the lot of them at the same time without clicking on each one individually? I am tired of clicking.

A: There is a very simple way to manage multiple files in all versions of Windows.

If you have a straight list of files in a folder you want to delete, you can highlight the first file and then hold the shift key down and highlight the last file in the list.

When you do this, all the files from the first one you selected to the last one will then be selected.

From here you can use the menu options to delete them all with one last click.

When working with a list of files where you may want to keep some but delete others, you can hold the Ctrl key and select or deselect any of the files you want to delete.

This also works with selecting multiple messages inside of most e-mail programs.

Write Jay Lee at helpline@chron.com.

You can view more questions and answers at the Help Line Blog located at blogs.chron.com/ helpline. Lee co-hosts the weekly radio show Technology Bytes from 8-10 pm Wednesdays on KPFT 90.1 FM in Houston. The program is also available on the Internet at www.geekradio.com. Lee cannot personally answer all reader questions.